Edward, Second Duke of York, Master of Game

This is the first scholarly edition of the earliest book about hunting in English. Edward, Second Duke of York (d. 1415), adapted his treatise from an earlier French manual, but added much new material, and it is considered to be an accurate representation of English hunting practice in the early fifteenth century.

Master of Game, composed c. 1406-1413, is the first book-length prose treatise on hunting in English. Largely a translation of thirty chapters of the Livre de chasse of Gaston Fébus, count of Foix, the English text is often modified to accord with English practice, and contains five chapters that must be regarded as Edward''s own contributions to knowledge about the sport. Topics include descriptions of the major game animals, the different types of hounds used in hunting and their care, and the procedures to be followed when searching out a suitable quarry and then pursuing it with hounds. A final chapter describes hunting with bows from fixed stations. This is the first scholarly edition that takes account of all twenty-eight extant witnesses, and the first representation of the Middle English text since the edition by William and Florence Baillie-Grohman in 1904. This new edition is based on the text preserved in MS Bodley 546, supplemented where necessary from Sloane MS 3501, and systematically collated with seven manuscripts that represent the three major family groups into which the witnesses can be divided. The Introduction includes full descriptions of the witnesses and analyses of textual relations among them, as well as inspections of linguistic features of key manuscripts. The Commentary takes account of obscurities and alterations in Edward''s text by referring wherever necessary to his French source.